Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European travellers and explorers who discovered Cappadocia’s exotic landscape of volcanic rock formations introduced the notion of a region populated by monks. Although written sources of the medieval period are silent in this regard, scholarship has persisted with this notion about the region ever since. Perhaps the general eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understanding of Byzantium as a period of decline following the Golden Age of Classical Antiquity reinforced the monastic interpretation. According to Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), the later history of the Roman Empire in the east was ‘a uniform tale of weakness and misery.’
1 This critical study first appeared in my dissertation, Kalas, V. ‘Rock-Cut Architecture from the Peristrema Valley: Society and Settlement in Byzantine Cappadocia’ (New York University 2000)Google Scholar. I wish to thank the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University for a post-doctoral research fellowship that allowed me to rework this for publication. I also thank the following for their helpful comments and suggestions: Jennifer Ball, Derek Krueger, Artemis Leontis, Amy Papalexandrou and Geoffrey Schmalz.
2 Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London 1985) 17 Google Scholar. The full six volumes were first published in 1788.
3 Rodley, L., Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia (Cambridge 1985)Google Scholar; Mathews, T. and Daskalakis-Mathews, A.-C., ‘Islamic-Style Mansions in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Development of the Inverted T-Plan’, journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 56 (1997) 294–315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Ousterhout, R., ‘Survey of the Byzantine Settlement at Çanli Kilise in Cappadocia: Results of the 1995 and 1996 Seasons’, DOP 51 (1997) 301–306 Google Scholar. Results of this very exciting survey will be presented fully in his forthcoming book: A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia.
5 A complete list in chronological order of travellers to Cappadocia before the 1920s can be found in de Jerphanion, G., Une nouvelle province de l’art byzantin: les églises rupestres de Cappadoce, 4 vols. (Paris 1925-42) vol. 1, XXXIII-LGoogle Scholar.
6 Lucas made three trips to the east and visited Cappadocia in his latter two voyages. Lucas, P., Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas fait par ordre du Roy dans la Grèce, l’Asie Mineure, la Macédoine et l’Afrique, 2 vols. (Paris 1712)Google Scholar; idem, Troisième Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas, fait en M.DCCX1V, &c. par ordre de Louis XIV dans la Turquie, l’Asie, la Sourie, la Palestine, la Haute et la Basse Egypte, &c. 2 vols. (Rouen 1719). His ‘fable’ on the discovery of the ‘pyramidal houses’ and the accompanying engraving appears in the former publication, Lucas (1712) vol. 1, 159-164. For a summary of Lucas’ voyages and a re-edition of his first publication, see Duranton, H. (ed.), Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas dans le Levant, juin 1699-juillet 1703 (Paris 1998)Google Scholar.
7 For excerpts in English of Paul Lucas, Charles Texier, William Hamilton, William Ainsworth and George Seferis see Rifat, S., ‘Cappadocia through the Eyes of Travelers,’ Cappadocia, ed. Sözen, M. (Istanbul 2000) 482–511 Google Scholar. A useful collection of essays on the genre of travel writing can be found in Hulme, P. and Youngs, T. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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10 Archives at The Institute for Asia Minor Studies in Athens and The Institute for Cappadocian Studies in Nea Karvali, near Kavala, Greece, document the lives and activities of nineteenth-century Cappadocians and can be mined for evidence of such practices. The Asia Minor refugees who were resettled in Greece in the 1920s and 1930s brought this archival material with them.
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13 It is important to note here that even Basil the Great and his circle of friends, because of their momentous role in ecclesiastical history, have also been abstracted from their wider social contexts. This wider social world of late Roman Cappadocia receives fresh treatment in a three-part study: Van Dam, R., Kingdom of Snow: Roman Rule and Greek Culture in Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2002)Google Scholar; idem, Families and friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2003); idem, Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2003).
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18 Apart from the historical geographers and architectural historians outlined in this section, several other nineteenth-century explorers were also concerned with more ‘scientific’ studies of the region. Particularly interested in geology, geography, and map-making were de Tchihatcheff, P., Asie Mineure, description physique, statistique et archéologique de cette contrée, 2 vols. (Paris 1860)Google Scholar, and Kiepert, H., Memoir über die Construction der karte von Kleinasien und tukisch Armenien in 6 Blatt (Berlin 1854)Google Scholar. One of the earliest archaeologists to record the prehistoric sites of central Anatolia, especially those of Cappadocia, was Chantre, E., Recherches anthropologiques dans l’Asie occidentale: missions scientifique en Transcaucasie, Asie Mineure et Syrie 1890-1894 (Lyon 1895)Google Scholar; idem, Recherches archéologiques dans l’Asie occidentale: mission en Cappadoce, 1893-1894 (Paris 1898).
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21 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, preface.
22 Ibid., 38.
23 Ibid., 39.
24 Ibid.
25 Kalas, ‘Rock-Cut Architecture’, 88-89.
26 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, plate 4. In another impressive engraving of a landscape view at Ürgüp, a monumental three-story façade is depicted in the rock formations shown in the background. Texier, Asie Mineure, plate 55.
27 For example, Esptein, Tokali Kilise, 81, states that Texier’s ‘precisely rendered fantasies stimulated his readers’ imagination’. Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 118-119, mentions Texier’s lithograph and admits the difficulty in identifying with any certainty the original monument rendered by the drawing.
28 Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 28, figs 21, 22, was the first to record this wall at Bezir Hane and to include it as part of a courtyard complex. This complex includes a church previously described by Jerphanion, , Une nouvelle province, vol. 1, 498–503 Google Scholar, and plate 137, who does not mention the complex or the façade.
29 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, 40-41.
30 Ibid., 205.
31 Mathews and Mathews, ‘Islamic-Style Mansions’.
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37 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 149, Abb. 116; see also Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 45-18.
38 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 151, Abb. 118, 119; see also Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 56-63.
39 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 151-152.
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79 Toxic substances, for example, might be released into the air when tuff erodes. Inhabitants of a Carribean island with active volcanoes suffer from a disease-causing mineral found in the air; see D. Wheeler, ‘Research Notes’, The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 5, 1999) A18, and a study by a group of British scientists in Science 19 (February 1999) 1142-1144. Medieval inhabitants of Cappadocia most likely were not aware of subtle health hazards. They may have perceived more immediate dangers, however, such as rockfall and erosion that would have determined their choice of dwelling location, as is the case in modern settlement patterns.
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